Friday, June 21, 2013

At 43, Is Rahul Gandhi Still A Youth Icon???

Rahul Gandhi - the Youth Icon of India.
Had I been an English teacher, this would have been the first example that I would have thought of to explain my students what an oxymoron as a figure of speech means. Typically, an oxymoron is a short phrase, a combination of words, that highlights two or more contrasting qualities/peculiarities at the same time. This very construction makes an oxymoron an illogical phrase. 'Deafening Silence', 'Constructive Destruction' etc. are a few examples of it.
Coming to Rahul Gandhi - Indian Politics' first family has been reveling in projecting their heir apparent as India Inc.'s youth icon.
However, there are some inherent flaws in this image projection.RaGa recently celebrated his 43rd birthday and was revered on that occasion by the members of the Youth Congress.
Now, at 43 , is he still young enough???
I guess not.

Courtesy: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/

In a country where the average age of the citizenry oscillates somewhere around 28, he certainly cannot be considered young, let alone being a youth icon. INC might be taking into account the average age of our politicians when calling him young, but that does not make his case of claiming himself younger any stronger. After all, the absolute age has to be 'the' final criteria for defining how young an individual is. So what if most of the politicians in India either already are or soon-to-be sexagenarians. And what if the most prominent leader of the prime opposition party is an octogenarian. They don't make RaGa any younger, they only make him appear a bit younger when in the pack.
Let's analyze what exactly the Congress aims to extract from this fake and false image. The Congress well aware that its days at the helm are nearing end, wanted a strong and popular contender to kick start and boost their election campaign. That,of course, could only have been RaGa. Now that he may be, but what he certainly isn't - is a good leader. This entire proposition by the Congress and its attempt to project Rahul as the young and vibrant leader, in its pursuit to retain power at the center, can be proved to be a fallacy. The point here the INC tries to make is that RaGa being a young leader will revamp the entire democratic system of India and largely the nation itself by pouring in a lot of novel ideas and plans. But then is the young and energetic RaGa mature enough to head the government of such a vast and diverse land called India , that too at such a critical time in history when India has been struggling to repeat the story of her golden days.So the RaGa saga, backfires for Congress on two accounts.
One, Rahul Gandhi is no more young enough to be projected as the youth icon of the country.
Second, even if he is considered young when gauged against the other fellow politicians, he is definitely not mature and 'grown-up' to the extent of leading a country like ours.He is still a teething baby, on the stage of Indian Politics.

RaGa might just be the apparent choice for the Congress, but he is not the right choice.